Archived decisions

HAMPSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL

Record of Executive Decision:

1) Summary:

The following decision was made:

1.1. To give single tender approval to revise and renew the software license agreement with Microsoft.

2) Reasons for the decision:

These are the reasons for this decision being made, including any links to the corporate strategy:

2.1. The Hantsnet service is delivered using software provided by Microsoft. It is important that this software is kept up to date to avoid unnecessary maintenance costs, ensure optimum supplier support and enable the introduction of additional and improved services. The Enterprise agreement provides software assurance that allows HCC to access and deploy the latest version of Microsoft operating systems and Office licences.

2.2. The current licensing agreement with Microsoft has come to an end and negotiations with Microsoft have delivered additional services at a lower cost than the previous agreement. The proposed Enterprise Agreement provides flexibility and certainty on future costs.

2.3. If the agreement is allowed to lapse, a number of services, particularly those provided to partner organisations, would cease to be licensed and a number of concessions would be lost, both of which would incur additional costs.

3) Other options considered and rejected:

3.1. Option 1: Allowing the license agreement to lapse.

a) Allowing the agreement to lapse would mean that hosting arrangements that we have in place with partner organisations would cease to be licensed. The cost of licensing these arrangements would be £235,000 per annum.

b) Should we opt to renew the Enterprise agreement at any time in the future, we would be required to re-purchase all of the licenses that we currently require which would add in excess a further £280,000 per annum for a 3 year agreement.

3.2. Option 2: Replace Microsoft Software with Google Applications

a) Google applications offer an alternative to the Microsoft suite of applications, but are delivered in a completely different way. Moving to such a method of service provision now would be both costly and risky.

b) The requirement for additional licensing costs for hosted applications would eliminate any cost saving from moving to Google Applications.

3.3. Option 3: Replace Microsoft Software with Open Source Software

a) IT Services currently make limited use of Open Source software for some back end services and continues to exploit this resource as appropriate. However, IT Services has achieved an extensive degree of integration between the different components of the Hantsnet Service and much of the capability for this integration is not yet available in Open Source products.

b) Open Source software requires a much greater level of support than proprietary software and would require additional technical resources.

c) There are significant differences in the way that Open Source Office applications work, compared with the Microsoft offering. Deployment of this software would require considerable retraining of users.

d) The County Council will still be required to fund the licensing costs of hosted applications.

4) Conflicts of Interest:

4.1. Conflicts of interest declared by the Decision-Maker:

a) None

4.2. Conflicts of interest declared by other Executive members consulted:

a) None

5) Dispensation granted by the Standards Committee:

None

6) Any reasons for the matter being dealt with urgently:

Microsoft have granted an extension to the licensing agreement which expired at the end of December, to enable conclusion to be reached on a range of technical issues. However the grace period will not be extended further. If the agreement is not renewed now, it will lapse and HCC will incur costs of £235,000 per annum in order to make existing hosting arrangements compliant. In addition a number of service concessions that have been negotiated with Microsoft will be lost.

7) Statement from the Decision Maker:

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